Advantages

Disadvantages

Overall great printer/scanner

I purchased this for when I was taking English language, as this meant that I required a lot of scanning books and printing essays etc and was told by my dad, whose work is associated with printing that this is a good one. From a liable enough source for me I purchased this a year ago ready for my printing to begin.

***How much it costs***

From HP's main site, it is being sold for £74 but have found after searching online that they can be sold for as little as £35 pounds from eBay or £55 from PC UK.

***What it does***

This printer and scanner can allow you to access the printer wirelessly which, in my house of wires, were what first attracted me to this printer. It has allowed me to print from my laptop to the printer regardless of where I am in the house at that time. It is also capable of scanning, copying and printing (colour/black and white) to and from your computer or from a memory card.

***How it works***

To set up the wireless, there is a fairly easy step to step installation CD to guide you through it. It took me about 5-10 minutes to do. My mother, who is less familiar with computers, took a little longer however, still managed to set it up without any problems. So the installation won't be a problem for those who don't understand computers to well.

Once it has setup, a small icon will appear in the corner (depending on windows) or a programme will be added to your computer which you can use to help with scanning etc.

To put the ink in, there is a book of instructions which gives clear pictures on how to pull out the tray so you won't be unscrewing or tugging anything to hard it breaks like some printers I have found.

The printer in this product is used the same as any other printer. There are no extra options you will have to click on to get it going. Just click on what you want to print and it should be sent to the printer in no time. The printing itself is an average speed so only really useful for household product rather than offices. The quality of the printing is mostly ok however I have found that sometimes, it is difficult to get the paper straight in the paper tray causing the pictures or font to be skewed.

The scanner is easy to use. It was my first time using a scanner but the instructions on the small screen of the product and the instruction were very helpful so I had no problem teaching myself. All you have to do it lift the lid up, place whatever you need inside, close the lid, press a few buttons and it will be printed out for you.

One problem that I have experience with the scanner however is occasionally if the lid won't close down completely on the pages I need to scan it can take a few minutes for the whole thing to finally be printed out. I haven't been able to fix this and there may not be a way. It certainly is annoying having to stand around holding the lid down for so long.

***its appearance***

The product does take up quite a bit of room but considering how there is so many things in one, its a lot smaller than I thought it would be. Its mostly white grey but can come in black as well. It has a small screen on the left hand side which will ask you what colour you want the pages to be, how to install, when to reline the pages and what status it is in. This then has a few buttons on the outside which allows you to select your options.

It doesn't weight too much. Its light enough for me to carry it from room to room without straining myself anyway.

***The bad points***

The only bad points I can pick out are very picky things that I can easily overcome such as the scanner being slightly slow on occasions, the paper tray sometimes being out of line and very rarely having trouble connecting with the printer. However, connection is never a major problem as on the hp website it guides you through some problems that may be in the way.

***overall***

This printer/scanner has been my mini miracle. For once I have a printer that isn't so stubborn not to work like my other ones and I finally can quickly print out some good quality pictures without all those wires getting tangled everywhere.

I would definitely recommend this printer as it's worth its rather pricey cost and will guarantee you won't be replacing it for a very long time.

Comments

Advantages

Disadvantages

Reasonably priced everyday printer with added functionality

THE BASICS

An all-in-one inkjet printer, scanner (1200 x 2400 dpi) and (digital) copier with built-in wireless connectivity (although it can also be used via a USB cable if desired) that also enables printing direct from memory cards (without a PC). Prints black and white pages at a speedy 30ppm (23 for colour). The box includes the printer, black and tri-colour cartridges, a power cord and adapter, sample paper (including photo paper), set up and functionality guides and software and - rather unusually - a USB cable (presumable because this is needed for set-up).

THE LOOK

Box shaped in off-white gloss, scanner lid orientated to the right, with the control panel to the left. Digital display and up-down arrives for print/scan/copy options as well as the wireless functionality (with 'on' indicated by a green light). An on button. Print tray has in and out divides, as well as being adjustable for photos - great if you're fed up of them coming out skew wiff. Fairly sleek, though with a relatively large footprint of 44 x 60cm.

THE PROS

- Excellent print and scan quality- Easy to set-up (though a lot of extraneous software seems to be installed at the same time)- Relatively inexpensive (c. £60)- Can be used as a single printer for numerous computers

THE CONS

- As with all printers these days, the cost of the printer seems to have been subsidised by the cost of the ink (i.e. very expensive). The cost of cartridges for this model can vary wildly. Black and white are available from Waitrose for £16.99 but cost around £23.99 from WHSmith and the printer makes clear its annoyance (!) if you use any but the branded options.- A new printer alignment page is required every time you make a print out - ensuring continued quality but very time consuming.- When scanning via the buttons on the printer (rather than using the on-computer software) the draft often fails to pick up the whole scan- Can be prone to printer jams.

Comments

Advantages

Disadvantages

See Review

When our last printer packed up we couldn't afford to buy a new one for a while and it was so frustrating not having a printer after you get used to having one, especially when you have a daughter needing to do homework. Then my other half's mum came to the rescue. She had bought herself one of these All in One printers when she bought her new lap top but had never had it out of the box and said we could have it if we printed out some photos for her in return.

The printer is a wireless one and we had never had one of those before so wasn't sure about setting it up. You had to plug it into the device you want it connected to with a normal plug first while it set it all up. Our main computer is not wireless anyway so we had to have the lead for this but the lap top is wireless and we set it up on there, then when we unplugged the lead we could use it as easy as anything. We do not have to go through the home network to use it, as long as the printer is switched on then it will work which I thought was brilliant.

The ink was easy to install and the compartment where you put the ink is easy to open and quick to change the ink. One of the things I don't like about it though is that the ink is quite expensive to buy once it runs out. The cartridges that came with the printer were full size so they did last quite a while when we were using it just for everyday printing and the odd photo or homework pics. Once it run out we went to our local computer shop where we have always bought out ink to see if they did a cheaper version than HP but they didn't stock the ink for this printer at all so my other half searched the net and bought a pack on line but it wasn't very good and run out within a week and the colours were nasty and didn't look right. I bought the proper HP inks instead and they are much better although they cost a lot more to buy, I think I paid about £23 for a pack with both black and white and colour in it (you only need the one colour cartridge which does all of the colours).

We used this new pack of inks to do his mum's photos for her, she wanted quite a few printed out, some black and white ones but mostly coloured. I managed to use up a whole pack of photo paper (20 sheets) plus a couple of pages out of a new pack before the coloured ink had all gone. I don't know if this is good or not as I haven't tried printing out this many photos at once before. We got either 6 or 4 photos on a page (they were scanned from an old photo album, not modern digital photos) so I reckon we did approx 140 photos altogether. There is still some black ink left but no colour so I reckon we used about £18 worth of ink plus the paper was Kodak paper and cost £6 for the pack (off Ebay) so add this in and it cost £24 to print 140 photos. I think if I did my maths properly this works out to just over 17p a photo. This is a bit dear up to Boots which is charging 10p per photo for between 100 and 150 but then doing it this way I could alter the size of the photo and cut bits out etc. Plus I didn't pay for the ink lol, his mum did and she was quite happy with the results. The colours on the ones we printed out were lovely and she thought some of them looked better quality than the originals.

It was easy to scan the photos in the first place. You get some software with the printer that you use called HP Solution Centre. You can put as many photos under the scanner as will fit and do them all in one go. It works out what are different photos easily for you unless you place them too near each other, then it can sometimes think two are stuck together as one big photo. But this is easy to rectify, you can adjust the portion of the picture to be scanned by dragging the dotted lines so they fit around the photos, this was good for the ones that had white borders so we could cut them off and just scan the rest of the picture. You can tell it to add another set of dotted lines if you want to in case it has two photos together as one, then you can split them up before it scans. You can also turn the photos around before it scans so they are the right way up. Then when you are happy you just press ok and it scans them and puts them in the folder you have specified or the one that is default and they will all be a different file name.

You can scan direct from the printer by using the buttons on the printer but I couldn't get this to work properly and as I find the other way easier I do it that way instead.

You can do a photo copy either in black and white or in colour just by pressing the buttons on the printer and this does work as we use it quite a lot. You don't even need the computer to be switched on to do it which is really good. Only thing is you won't have a saved copy on the computer like if you scanned it.

One other thing I don't really like with this printer is the fact that the paper had to go in the front of the printer. You pull down the flap at the front and place the paper in side. Only trouble is you can't then close the front without taking the paper back out again which means you can't just leave paper in the printer ready to use like I could with out old one. It does look nice and tidy though with the front shut up when your not using it, just a pain having to put the paper away every time and then get it out again when you want to do some more printing.

The software that comes with the computer is good for showing you how to do something as well like how to change the inks if you haven't done it before, or if something goes wrong it helps you sort it out. We had a slight problem when we first changed the inks to do the photos and the first lot came out with lines going across. I went on the trouble shoot and it told me exactly what to do to get rid of the lines and it worked first time and was easy to do.

You also get some other software with it called Shop for HP Supplies which I have found good. You click on the link and it opens up a page in Internet Explorer and shows you all the different inks you can buy for this printer plus paper. You then choose what you want, I bought a double pack with both B/W and colour cartridges in it. Then it goes to another page which shows you 4 or 5 different shops which stock the item and how much it is to buy it at each shop. This was really handy as it was a lot cheaper in one shop, by as much as £5 or even more. You can then buy it from the cheapest stockist.

There are probably a lots of other things you can do with this all in one but this review shows you the main things that you would want it to do.

I can't find it for sale on the net as when I search it keeps showing me sites that sell inks for it but I think she paid about £70 or £80.

Comments

Advantages

Disadvantages

Highly reccomended to anyone who wants a good quality printer without all the fuss!

I purchased my HP Photosmart C4580 printer last August, ready to take to University with me. I wanted a reasonably priced printer, that was easy to transport and set up, and preferably with a photocopying facility. I didn't need anything super fancy, but as it would be mostly used for coursework and assignments it was really important that the printer produced a good quality print.

If I remember rightly, I brought this printer for around £100, possibly slightly less. And considering all the facilities it has, it's been brilliant value for money!

The design of the printer itself is very modern and sleek, with a shiny white and grey appearance. It's compact and sits neatly at the back of my desk without getting in the way.

Paper feeds and prints from the front, which is great because it means the printer can sit back against the wall and not have to be moved forward for paper coming out of the top as with some printers. The printing tray also folds up completely flush with the printer meaning it takes up even less space when you're not using it! The front of the printer flips down really easily, so should you get a paper jam it is easy to fix the problem without having to take the printer apart or even move it!

On top, are the photocopying/scanning elements of the printer. I've only used the scanning facilities once but the quality seemed to be very good when the document arrived onto my computer. I use the photocopying option all the time, and it copies really well, and is also quite fast compared to other printers I've used.

On the front left of the printer, there is a small colour screen with several buttons. Above the screen is the on off button, the wireless button, followed by the menu button, OK button, and a button with a red cross, used for cancelling or exciting menus. To the left of the screen there are three buttons, blue, grey, and green, and these are used to correspond with options on the screen. With only 8 buttons, the printer is very simple to use and very much self explanatory.

Upon pressing the menu button, the user is faced with three options. The first, is to adjust the quality of the print, with the option of one to three stars. Lower quality prints are faster, but there is such a drastic difference in the quality on the two star setting, I tend to use this for my everyday printing. The second option, is to adjust size, from actual size 1:1, resize with border, and resize borderless. The third option will determine the number of copies to be made from one to ten. Again, nothing fancy here and very simple, but useful none-the-less.

To confirm the choices you simply press OK, or to cancell press the red cross button. This will lead you back to the main screen, which gives you the scanning and photocopying options. The top option is to scan/reprint, the middle to start a black copy, and the final to start a colour copy. The exact specifications for your copies can be tweaked in the menu as described above.

Underneath the screen there are two slots for memory cards. One is for MS/Duo cards, and the other SD/XD/MMC cards. I've not had chance to use the photograph printing facility yet, but if it's as simple as the rest of the printer to use I'm sure I'll be making great use of it this summer!

Cartridges are widely available, I buy mine in a supermarket, but you can also buy them from specialist shops or on-line. To replace the cartridges, you simply flip down the front of the printer, remove the old ones from the right hand side of the printer, and insert the new ones in as shown on the packet. It really is that simple, and if I can do it correctly, anyone can!

In terms of set up, it really couldn't be much easier. The printer can be connected in two ways, via wireless or through USB. I use the USB option whilst at uni, (because I didn't want everybody to be printing their work to my room!) although I plan to use the wireless when I get home. The printer comes with some software on a CD, and it's very quick and easy to install, although I'm told the printer will work without it! Then you simply plug the USB in and print away! I work from a MacBook Pro, and have had no problems connecting the printer to a Mac. I also take my laptop all over the place and love that I can plug/unplug the printer whenever I want without having to change settings or reinstall, it just plugs in and works! If I leave it on, it puts itself into standby mode to save energy and the wakes up quickly and smoothly as soon as I click print.

Overall, this printer has served me really well, and coped with everything I've asked of it throughout my year at Uni. In fact, it's so robust, it even coped with me accidentally feeding it an empty packet of paracetamol along with the paper in a late night essay crisis!

Comments

Advantages

Disadvantages

Value for money, What a bargain!

Technology really has come on a long way. This printer is more than just a printer it really is brilliant. It is small, compact so easy to store at home.

I'm not very technologicaly minded so haven't figured out how to use the wireless function but a friend who has this device has and the wireless function is really good and reliable.

Overall, this was very simple to use, it has quick start instructions and took about 10 minutes to set up. The longest part was actually installing the printer driver on our computer.

Once this was uploaded it is very simple to use and well worth the money. It is a printer, scanner and photocopier all in one. It has an SD memory card slot so you can easily upload and print pictures. The quality of printing is actually very good.

It has a little colour screen that tells you what to do which is quite neat. It is easy to follow. When installing ink cartridges I had to scratch my head for a moment or two but if you can read basic instructions (which clearly I struggle with!) then you will be fine as they slot into place quickly and easily.

You can pull down the front cover, and it reveals the paper feed tray and an extra support slides out from its back. It is very compact and neat.

The printer itself can be purchased from £50-£60 and cartridges cost between £10-£15. all in all it is a brilliant and inexpensive printing device.

Comments

Advantages

Disadvantages

In my opinion the best printer around

To start with I'd say this printer is the best we've had to date. As for looks it's very aesthetically pleasing; although the white design is unique (as far as I know) it looks clean and sleek. As for the quality of the product it's fantastic, it's solid, well built and durable. Now for the most important part the actual printing which has fantastic quality and uses very little ink, we've had the printer for around 2 months and still on the ink that came free with the printer so unfortunately can't comment on the cost of the ink, but do know that they are widely available and so with some looking I'm sure you'll find a fantastic deal. We use the printer with a laptop through it's wireless network which to date hasn't failed, we've also used it through the USB lead which again gives faultless results. Another really strong feature is it's screen which allows you to use the printer independently of any PC or Laptop through its card slot which as it's full colour display and although small can easily be seen and used. We managed to get this printer for around £65 from ALDI so if you shop around you can get this fantastic printer for a much lower price.